Page 35 of Forbidden Girl

“Of all the women who have actually been with me, you’re still on the one who hasn’t?”

She flips her long blonde hair at me and sulks. “Yes. I don’t care about the women before me. She’s, like, concurrent with me.”

It’s been a rough day in every sense of the word. She’s tired and ornery. “Okay, but I’m not tryna flee the country with her, am I?”

I shift my eyes from the road and catch her squinting at me, bothered that I shut her down with a lone sentence. “You couldn’t just let me be mad for no reason for five minutes?”

“No. That’s a girl game I don’t play.”

She leans over the center console, stretching her seatbelt to its limit to kiss me. “I love that about you. You won’t let me get away with throwing a fit.”

“You’re not an unreasonable spoiled brat so why bother pretending to be?”

“Because it’s fun to wind people up sometimes.”

I don’t see the appeal. Winding someone up in my line of work? Someone would end up with their teeth bashed in. “Whatever you say.”

There’s a sign on the side of the dusty country highway that reads Chandler House Inn, Two Miles. A random inn in a nameless Maine town is as good a place as any for two runaways to get some respite from the day’s craziness. It’s starting to get dark, and I’m aching from head to toe.

“Google that joint.” I motion to the sign.

She does. “It’s a five-room bed and breakfast in a converted Victorian mansion. There’s a swimming pool, and the two suites on the ground floor each have a private jacuzzi. Ooh. That would be a very good thing for your muscles, which I’m sure are killing you.” No joke. She’s been watching me try to loosen myself up for an hour.

The beating I doled Teague was not my first rodeo. And Jules is too intelligent not to know that an ice bath would be better. I see what she’s doing. She’s had to be wily her entire life in order to gain any freedom or an identity of her own. Sooner or later, it’ll sink in for her that she doesn’t have to be that person with me. “Just say you want a tubby, Jules.”

“I want a fucking tubby.”

“Okay, my love. You shall have one.”

Driving though Gray, Maine, it irks me how eerily quiet it is. Not that I expected a bustling nightlife from a tiny, one-tavern town. But it doesn’t have a quaint seaside village vibe, more like something from a horrifying zombie video game. The fog rolling in, smokey and iridescent under the streetlights, is not helping the atmosphere.

Chandler House sits atop a hill. Its driveway is unpaved. The BMW churns up gravel and pebbles the whole way. There’s a parking area with only one space taken. I occupy the one beside it.

“I can’t decide if this feels cozy or if we’re about to walk into a remake of Psycho,” Jules says as we’re ascending the wide verandah to the front door. Psycho I could handle. It’s “cozy” that makes me anxious. I thrive in chaos. It’s been my default state of being for twenty-three years.

We enter the inn. Jules goes straight for the antique wooden desk with a handwritten sign that reads Check In and rings a small gold bell. The ting reverberates for a while. When no one greets us after a minute, she rings it twice more. I feel that. It’s not out of character for her to be impatient, but it is for me. I understand where it’s coming from. I want to get into a room, a closed space that’s unlikely to be intruded on, but that I could defend if it were.

A woman with salt and pepper hair comes jostling down the winding carpeted staircase, appearing disheveled as she ties her bathrobe closed. “Hi, hi, hello!” she singsongs. “So sorry, wasn’t expecting any guests tonight.”

Jules beams and turns up the charm to eleven. “Please, don’t be sorry. We’re sorry not to have made a reservation. We were just passing through town, saw this beautiful inn, and felt so drawn to it! It seemed like a very comfy place to get some R&R for a few days.” She gestures to her forehead. “Surfing accident. Do you have any rooms available?”

The woman is downright enchanted. Hell, I am, too, even though I know Jules is bullshitting and have been able to see through her glossy veneer from day one.

“We do! I have one on the third floor, very spacious, and the Grand Suite on the first floor. That room has a hot tub.”

“That sounds lovely. What do you think, sweetheart?” She makes a show of consulting me.

I fight the urge to shoot her an eyeroll and nod instead.

“We’ll take the suite.”

“Wonderful. And that room is open until Monday. How long will you be staying?”

“Let’s book it through Monday.”

“Great. I’ll just need a credit card to have on file.”

Jules falters ever-so-slightly. It’s more than the fact that her dad controls her finances; credit cards are trackable—either of us using one could mean trouble. Right. Money is the solution to almost every problem. If money can’t fix it, it’s not a problem, it’s a crisis.

---